


Your Boots Beneath My Bed

by notsodarling



Series: the battle picked me [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Miscommunication, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28457706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsodarling/pseuds/notsodarling
Summary: Michael tries to fulfill the request of the time traveling Alex who visited him.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: the battle picked me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084403
Comments: 13
Kudos: 63





	Your Boots Beneath My Bed

**Author's Note:**

> Leave Michael alone and crying? I couldn't do that. So here's part 2, which ends on a much happier note.
> 
> title from "cowboy like me" by Taylor Swift
> 
> <3

Michael gets home later that evening, and tries to not act like he's just found out the worst news possible from a time traveler. Alex has already eaten dinner, and is curled up on the couch, laptop and work documents spread out around him, and all over the coffee table.

He takes a moment to commit the sight to memory, everything from the haphazard way Alex's hair is sticking up from where he's run his fingers through, to the crease in his brow as he concentrates. He doesn't know how he's supposed to break Alex's heart now, when all he wants to do is take hold of him and never let go.

It had to be bad, he knows. Whatever happened in the future, it was terrible enough for Alex to travel back here to try and fix it.

Wordlessly, Michael takes Alex to bed. Removes his prosthetic and undresses him piece by piece, worshiping each bit of skin and part of Alex's body as it's revealed from underneath his clothes. He wonders if Alex can tell something is wrong, and just isn't asking. And maybe it's better this way, just for tonight, though he hopes Alex doesn't. For once he hopes Alex isn't observant and curious and looking for answers.

When he kisses Alex, lips crashing together, Michael understands the urgency and the hunger with which Not!Alex had kissed him earlier. He feels it now, knowing that he may not get to kiss Alex again, not after he follows through and breaks Alex's heart.

And shatters his own in the process.

He gets Alex to fuck him as they lay on their sides, Michael grinding himself back into Alex's body, Alex's arm wrapped around him, holding them close. He cries out, loud and uncaring, as Alex's thrusts into that beautiful sweet spot, twisting himself back so their lips can meet, needing to kiss Alex as he pushes into him. As his orgasm builds, and Alex's movements get more erratic, he feels Alex wrap a hand around him, doubling the sensations, and Michael reaches out, feeling almost overwhelmed as he grabs a fistful of sheets with one hand, the other reaching back to rest on Alex's ass, feeling his movements.

When his climax hits, Michael chokes it out against Alex's lips, not realizing until afterwards that he's started crying. In an effort to hide it, to make sure Alex doesn't notice, Michael lets Alex slip out of him, and flips them around on the bed, pushing Alex onto his back, and kissing a trail from his lips to between his legs. He sucks Alex off quickly, knowing he's close, and swallows everything down as Alex's release empties into his mouth.

They fall asleep wrapped up together, limbs tangled, foreheads pressed together.

In the morning, he wakes up to Alex still next to him, fingers intertwined between them. He doesn't know how to do this, how to tell Alex what happened at the junkyard, or if telling him will make the future that Not!Alex was trying to avoid even worse. He lays awake, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling, until he feels Alex stir next to him.

"You wanna talk about it?" Alex asks, and Michael closes his eyes as he pushes his fingers through his curls, lightly scratching at his scalp. Of course Alex knows, he was a fool to even entertain the possibility that Alex didn't notice.

"I don't know if I can." It feels like a Herculean task before him, sharing the events of yesterday. He reaches out, his own fingers sliding across Alex's morning stubble, and Michael leans in, kissing him, pushing in with a bit too much force, but melting into the contact. "I don't know where to start."

Alex smiles at him. "At the beginning."

The words pour out of him after that, the two of them curled up in bed together, and Michael has never felt more loved, more safe and secure than he does when he's in Alex's arms. And Alex listens as he speaks, badly recounting the visitor and the warnings, his voice choking as he tries to tell Alex what will end up saving them both in the end.

When he's finished, when he feels as though there are no more tears he could possibly cry, Alex reaches up, gently placing his hands on his face, and pressing a kiss to his lips.

"That sounds like me," Alex starts. "But maybe, _maybe_ I'm wrong."

Michael perks up at Alex's very suggestion. If he doesn't have to break Alex's heart, if they don't have to put an end to all their hard work, and the life they've started to make together - he's been so distraught, so torn up over what Not!Alex had told him, he hadn't even let his mind consider other possibilities.

"Remember what Jones said? That more would be coming, looking for you? For Max and Isobel? Maybe they finally found you."

The Alighting. Max had said Noah mentioned them before he died, vague references about traveling to Earth to find them, inferring that the three of them were never meant to leave their home planet - wherever it may be. Jones had been tight lipped with information, strong enough to withstand Isobel and keep his thoughts hidden.

"But both Noah and Jones said they wanted us alive. Noah had even been prepping to put us in the pods, in stasis. And Max brought people back from the dead! What good would dying do if-" Michael pauses, trying to settle his mind just a fraction. "He meant all three of us."

"Meant what?"

Michael scrambles, ignoring Alex's question, and hopping out of the bed, looking around for his jeans, needing his cell phone, needing to call Max. He knows Alex is watching him, waiting patiently, and and as he all but rips the piece of technology from his pants pocket before tossing them back in the direction of the hamper, he notices Alex is staring down at his own cell phone, distracted by something on the screen.

He dials Max's number.

"Michael?"

"Did someone visit you yesterday? Did you talk to a Liz from the future?"

Max's silence answers his question.

"She told you to break up with her, right?"

"She did," Max confirms and Michael can hear the skepticism in his voice. "Michael, what's going on? How did you know-"

"Because some future version of Alex appeared at the junkyard yesterday and told me the same thing."

Max is silent on the other end, but Michael can't look away from Alex, who's tapping away at the screen of his cell phone. He knows that they should get together, talk about this, figure out how to move forward with these new warnings. And he doesn't have to ask to know Max is having the same difficulties with Liz.

Sometimes he feels a fool for ever doubting how much Max loved her.

"Michael?" Max's voice is quieter on the other end, worried creeping into the way he's saying his name. "I don't - I don't want to put her through that again. I can't do that to her."

It'd certainly be the second time Max would be choosing to be the martyr that resulted in his untimely death. But there's a small comfort in Max's apprehension to dying again, that he finally is beginning to understand the amount of hurt he caused by being selfish.

"You won't."

"We can't see the future, Michael. You don't know that."

See the future.

Michael almost drops his cell phone. _Maria_.

"We're gonna figure this out," he says instead, giving his brother a rushed goodbye before ending the call.

For a moment, he stands at the foot of the bed, and lets it all sink in. He's standing in a bedroom that is _theirs_ , his _and_ Alex's. In a house they've made into a _home_. Something Michael had believed for a long time was out of reach for someone like him. He'd dreamed it, allowed himself to hope during those first couple months back when they were teenagers. Youthful fantasies of a better life.

He'd thought, foolishly perhaps, that he could move on. That somehow there would be a day he wasn’t completely and irrevocably in love with Alex Manes. He knows he loves Maria, and their time together doesn't feel like a waste, it doesn't feel like something he could ever regret either - dating her had allowed him to grow in ways he hadn't realized he'd needed. 

And in the end, long after Maria had broken up with him, and Alex and Forrest were no longer dating, they'd come back together. It'd been more of a gentle fall instead of the crash landings that had always accompanied them before. And now that they'd gotten here, that it felt like they could finally put _hope_ into the future, of course it was trying to crash back down around them.

"At least you called," Maria snaps at him by way of a greeting when he dials her number. "Alex has been composing novels in my text messages, and Liz hasn't replied in hours."

Michael falls onto the bed, sitting near Alex's legs and wraps his fingers around Alex's ankle, just needing the tiny bit of contact.

"So I am going to tell you, what I already tried to tell Alex." He tries not to wince at the abruptness in her voice. "I know you'll make the right decision. As for what that is, I can't say. I will not influence the future because you're afraid to make a choice."

"Maria-"

She scoffs at him, and he stops. "It'll be alright, Guerin."

It’s unsurprising that she ends the call, and he drops his cell phone onto the bed, taking a deep breath before twisting around and crawling up toward Alex. He doesn't stop, lets his fingers run over the bare skin of Alex's thigh, his hip, leans forward, pushing up into Alex's space, their lips connecting as they fall back together into the pillows, Alex's fingers tangling in his curls.

"She's mad we're trying to drag her into this," Alex says against his lips, and Michael knows he's right. "But I didn't know what else to - Michael, I can't imagine-"

"I know." He kisses Alex again, fingers playing with the hair at the back of Alex's neck, their foreheads pressed together tightly. "I know."

They drift off that way, wrapped up in each other's arms, and Michael tries not to think about how they still haven't made a decision. How he still hasn't done what Not!Alex said and broken up with Alex.

But when he wakes up hours later to the feeling of Alex's fingers in his hair, Michael's got an idea forming. He doesn't know if it's foolish, he doesn't know if it'll change anything, but he does know that he _cannot_ break Alex's heart. He cannot sweep aside everything they've worked so hard for. If the Alighting is coming for them, if it means it will fall to him, and Max, and Isobel to fulfill whatever destiny they were meant for, then they'll do it.

Whatever it takes to train and strengthen their abilities, but they'll have more than just each other. Because maybe once upon a time, Michael believed he was alone. He believed no one care about him, that be would always be that unwanted little boy, left behind. But he's learned over the past couple years that these days, things are different. He has Max and Isobel, though he supposes he's always had them. But now he's also got Liz, and Maria, and even Kyle, if he's being stubborn.

And he's got Alex. The first person to ever make him believe he could make this planet home. Like he didn't need to try and figure a way off to go look for the family he believed was out there, somewhere in the universe.

Alex stirs next to him, and Michael waits to see him open his eyes before sharing his plan.

"He said I chose you," Michael starts, holding on to Alex's hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing the back. "That choosing you was my downfall. But choosing you could never be wrong. And I refuse to believe that letting you go, of not continuing to build this life we've started, is somehow the better option."

"I can't lose you," Alex replies, words whispered against Michael's lips. It reminds Michael of Caulfield, of Alex's choice that day, refusing to leave him. Alex had made the stubborn, foolish decision that either Michael came with him or they died together, and Michael understood these days, so much more than he bad been willing to believe back then, that it had been because Alex refused to live in a world without him. Michael had believed Alex would be fine, that he'd move on the way he'd been asking to do, hadn't quite understood the space and new beginning Alex had thought he'd been asking for.

Miscommunication had always been their greatest hurdle.

"I am not going anywhere." Michael kisses Alex again, and again, and again.

Because he's not. He and Max and Isobel, the three of them can do whatever they need to do to prepare for a forthcoming invasion. The three of them can train together, and not just separate and individually as they discover new abilities. But they can also have the people in their lives that are important, who can help them even further in getting themselves ready for whatever is coming. It means they won't be doing it alone either.

Michael wonders if the future Not!Alex came from had resulted in them losing focus, believing they could somehow have their happy lives, free of anyone looking for them or coming after them. Maybe they all got too complacent and it was too late by the time they realized what was happening. He knows how easy it would be to do - mornings like this where he wakes up next to Alex, where he looks at Alex and feels nothing but love and admiration and total content for getting to this moment.

Not!Alex had been a warning.

"Together," Michael says into the space between their lips, noses brushing gently. "We do this together."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
